Q&A Rabbi Steven Wernick: Shul must offer meaning

Rabbi Steven Wernick

Rabbi Steven Wernick, CEO of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism (USCJ), was in Toronto last month as part of a cross-country tour visiting Canadian synagogues. He sat down to discuss the challenges facing the movement and its future.

What do you hear from Canadian congregations?

It’s concern about the future and what are the things we should be focusing on. There’s a clear understanding of many of the challenges that we face in terms of literacy, living in an open society, assimilation, intermarriage and so forth. There’s an understanding that the business model of synagogues has radically changed.

What do you mean the business model has changed?

A membership model is based on a transactional relationship and it’s based on certain assumptions of affiliation that can no longer be made. Synagogues used to have a monopoly on education. If you wanted Jewish learning, you had to be part of a synagogue. They no longer have that monopoly. People go to Wikipedia. Synagogues used to have a monopoly on life-cycle events. They no longer have a monopoly. You can get a life-cycle event done practically anywhere. 

So the fundamental purpose of sacred community has to be re-imagined for the needs of individuals today. We need to focus more on Torah as wisdom for leading a meaningful life, as the primary reason why we cluster in communities, because that Torah is most powerfully felt in relation to other beings that share a commitment to each other, to God, Torah, and to Israel, the Jewish People and the Land of Israel.

Rather than asking “How can I get more members in,” I think the core question synagogues have to ask is “How can I get more meaning out?”

The change today is if you only worry about membership, you’re not going to get the money or the members. You have to worry about meaning and about how you can understand people’s self-interest, their values, their stories, and organize around what those interests are through a Jewish lens. If you do that, then you build a financial model around it, which is the reverse of what tends to happen today. 

In Toronto, a number of shuls have left the USCJ. What is the argument for them to rejoin the movement?

United Synagogue has really heard, understood and internalized the need for change and has successfully transformed itself into a new organization. If you want to have a seat at the table that shapes the [ideological] centre and the future of the centre, United Synagogue is the platform that makes that table possible. 

The synagogue has been the most successful institution for the mass transmittal of Jewish identity for the last 2,000 years. There’s nothing on the horizon that looks like it’s going to take its place.

United Synagogue creates the platform for congregations that share a worldview can come together to discuss, share, and co-create the future. If you look at the work United Synagogue does, by virtue of the fact it’s the largest constituent body for Conservative Judaism in the world, our engagement with Ottawa, our engagement with Washington, our engagement with Jerusalem, we’re invited to participate in those conversations because we’re viewed as representing that body. So if you want to have influence, you need to be at the table.

Looking at challenges facing synagogues, how can they change?

 Those synagogues that are understanding the status quo is not sustainable are making changes. What does it really mean to be relational? Obviously you do programs, but what are the values that underpin the programs you create? What does success look like?

If you value Torah learning as a transformative experience, then are you asking people what are their concerns in the world and the way in which they can be transformed. Same thing about prayer.

It’s not that there are any easy fixes for this, and it’s not like there’s a program bank like we used to have.

What does success look like?

It looks like having a deep understanding of who are the people in your community. Many synagogues will do the ceremonial pre-Rosh Hashanah phone call, where the board will call shul members, and everybody’s excited that no one’s asking for money, they’re just saying “Good yontif.”

If we were to really become a relational synagogue, the questions are different. You want to know what gets people up in the morning and keeps them up at night. Then you create activities in response to what people are thinking about. It has staffing implications – not only how much staff do you have, but what are the jobs of the staff?

That’s not to say casino nights or social programs are unimportant. But it is to say that the job of the leadership is not to micro-manage that type of activity. The job of the leadership is to say if we care about Torah and tfillah, if we care about Israel, what are the ways that we leverage our resources to accomplish that?

 Synagogues are going to need an endowment that generates 20 per cent of their operational income or they’re not going to be sustainable. And they’re going to need to create that within the next 15 years.

Why is this so crucial for synagogues?

We have a heavy investment in real estate that’s becoming more and more expensive to maintain. Fixed costs like staffing and electricity are going up and the amount of money a Jewish family is able and prepared to spend annually has just about topped out. There’s not much higher you can go in terms of what you charge for dues, so you have to build the endowment. Plus, we know the assumptions for millennials to join are different than the assumptions of baby boomers and current retirees.

How will the Conservative movement look in 10 to 15 years?

There’s going to continue to be some more contraction, but I think the engagement and commitment levels are going to go up.

I hope synagogues will come to understand that the conversation with millennials, Jewish adults in their 20s and 30s, is not how can we engage you but can we help you engage us? That engagement might not happen in the synagogue. It might have to be something the synagogues supports in urban areas where Jewish adults in their 20s and 30s live. 

My vision would be that we actually align what we profess with what we do, that we’re more concerned about Judaism as a means for refining the human condition than we are about boundaries, that we don’t measure success by how many observances a person has but how a person uses observance to improve the human condition. And that our synagogues understand that success can’t be just looking internally and asking “How do I drive members to my shul?” but “How do I drive my shul to making meaning within the lives of my members and the community in which we live?” That would be really exciting. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for style and clarity.